Quote Originally Posted by Re-sign Carl Dale View Post
Thank you for sharing.

For every reply and message that you've read, there are countless others like me who have read and been moved & inspired by you. Thank you for sharing your heart-breaking journey, and I'm pleased you are going to keep updating on here.

I read your original post out to my wife last night after she was complaining about how crap things seem, and how fed up she is with life. For context our youngest daughter is autistic and her behaviour is 'challenging' at times. Most of us are guilty of living in our own heads and reading a post like yours puts life into perspective.
I can fully understand the stresses and worries that your family are going through with an autistic child.

I have 3 grown up daughters and my middle daughter is severely autistic. She was diagnosed at the age of 3 in 1996. She had very severe behavioural issues and is non verbal. We had little expectation for her in those days. Schooling in the early days was difficult and when she was she was placed in a special needs school nearby, who could only walk her around the grounds to placate her and no teaching was happening.

We fought tooth and nail with authorities to get her the educational environment that she needed. After 3 years we got the funding to a specialised autistic school near Birmingham called Sunfield. This was a boarding school which taught life skills after classes. It completely changed her, to such an extent that she now lives in an assisted living house just a couple of miles away from us. She comes over for the weekend every 2 weeks. It is her birthday next week and she is going to Disney in Paris with her house mates and staff.

Do not listen to the experts, as they will try to limit your expectations. They told my wife not to teach her to read or Makaton sign language, which she ignored. She can now read, spell and sign. She did this at 10 when she sat at my computer and wrote a legible paragraph, we were stunned. She no longer has behavioural issues, which stopped when she was able to communicate effectively. Nowadays if we cant understand her she will type it out on her iPod.

When dealing with the authorities for her needs be the loudest person in the room and keep pestering them until they give up. It does works. If they refuse pester your councillor or MP. Things do to get better